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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22955578">A Ghost of Lasan</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAntleredPolarBear/pseuds/TheAntleredPolarBear'>TheAntleredPolarBear</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Kid Fic, Serious Injuries</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 12:13:49</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,575</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22955578</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAntleredPolarBear/pseuds/TheAntleredPolarBear</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Garazeb Orrelios finds something precious amidst the death and destruction of his home planet, and finds a new purpose in the aftermath.</p><p>(in which I attempt to write a Twi'leki poem and it sounds awful).</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Garazeb "Zeb" Orrelios &amp; Hera Syndulla, Garazeb "Zeb" Orrelios &amp; Original Character</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>A Ghost of Lasan</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkDranzer/gifts">DarkDranzer</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Shortly before the siege of Lasan ended, Garazeb Orrelios was caught in a direct incendiary bomb hit.</p><p>He’d woken up hours after the last bombs had dropped on Lasan’s royal city. His body burned with pain. Small fires crackled nearby. He tried to lift his head, but it hurt too much. Ashla knows how he’d survived. Not that it mattered, since the blood loss would no doubt kill him anyway. But he’d failed his people, and his death would be slow and painful. Just as he deserved.</p><p>Then he’d heard it. Somewhere near to him, something cried.</p><p>Finding her was the hardest thing he’d ever done. He couldn’t stand, but he managed to turn over. Couldn’t walk, so he crawled. He dragged a broken leg behind him.</p><p>He thought a few times about stopping. They would die soon anyway. But each time he steeled himself against the pain, and threw out a bleeding arm, gripped another handhold, and forced himself onward. He could not, <em>would</em> not, let a baby die alone.</p><p>He planned on allowing himself a brief moment of bittersweet joy when he found her. But when he saw her, curled up beneath the corpse of her mother, the tears he shed were not out of happiness. The most awful wailing shuddered out of her tiny mouth. Zeb had seen many a sibling born and raised in his home growing up, but he’d never heard a child make a noise so desperate, so wrenching. Her tiny hands were fisted in her own hair. He reached for her. She was so small, barely longer than his own hand, but she gripped a finger tight. She’d been born strong. Now her life was over.</p><p>He’d never known such despair in all his life. Body caked in blood, and hurting so much it all blended together, lying in the rubble. He couldn’t move his head any more, but he could feel hers nestled against his neck. He’d traced patterns with his fingers in fur matted with meconium and dust. She wiggled and nuzzled his jaw, clung tight to his beard, of all things. He couldn’t feed her, and she cried for her hunger. He tried to call for help, but his pleas went unanswered. Eventually, they both fell silent. They had no company but each other. Just the two of them slowly slipping away, shrouded in the fog, and no one coming to save them.</p><p>But she wasn’t alone.</p><p>She wasn’t there when he woke. Everything ached. His brain felt fogged up, his thoughts too vague to process properly. He could feel a tube in his nose, and sensors clipped and stuck to various points across his body. He was strapped down to the bed, too weak to break free, but not too weak to yell for her.</p><p>
  <em>My daughter! My daughter! Where is she? What have you done with her?</em>
</p><p>There was a human by his bedside, along with the medical droids. He called himself Kanan. Kanan explained that the baby was alive. She needed tests, and Hera was with her, though he never said who Hera was. She was doing well. And then…then he brought up Lasan.</p><p>He and the baby were the only survivors.</p><p>Garazeb Orrelios screamed until he was sedated.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>“<em>Freykaa’numa, kairn kagrai.</em></p><p>
  <em>Afa’en ayyku, ma’allesh.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Ledo sur kora, kich’ee sur seku,</em>
</p><p><em>Seel en meyrru, ma’allesh</em>.”</p><p>Zeb manages to blink his eyes open to a view of blurred white and pastel colours common in hospitals. As his ears prick up, he becomes aware of more noises in the room: the beeps of monitors, the distant chattering of the intercom, the rasping sounds of his own breathing. He doesn’t recognise the singing voice, but the small gurgle that follows the last note causes him to perk up yet further.</p><p><em>She survived. </em>He directs his ever-clearing line of vision to where he thinks the noise had come from, and there she is. Just a blurred shape, at first, but as he blinks the sleep out of his eyes, he can see eight fingers, and eight toes, and a face serene in sleep. She’d been so filthy before, he hadn’t been able to discern the colour of her fur, but now he can see that it’s pure white, the colour of freshly fallen snow. One arm is strapped to her side. He only lets out a quiet gasp, but it’s enough to disturb her. One pointed ear twitches in his direction. She opens a pair of beautiful blue eyes, and when they swivel in his direction, she lets out an excited little squeal.</p><p>“Figures.”</p><p>With a significant amount of effort, Zeb manages to tear his eyes away from the infant. Standing next to her cot is a woman he’s never seen before. A Twi’lek, he thinks, with green skin and long head-tails decorated with pale tattoos. She can’t be much older than twenty. Zeb wants to ask about what she’d said, but his throat is so dry, the most he can do is give her a quizzical look. She seems to pick up on the problem, because she leans towards his beside into a blind spot caused by the pillow, and returns to his range of vision with a cup of water. She guides the straw into his mouth.</p><p>“Figures you’d wake up just as I got her down for her nap,” she says, with a smile that shines in her kind, emerald-coloured eyes. “Now she’s all worked up. But I’ll let you off, considering the situation.”</p><p>He swallows the mouthful of water, and with it the lump in his throat descends a little. “Are you Hera?” he asks.</p><p>“Yes, that’s me,” the stranger says. “Kanan said he’d mentioned me.”</p><p>Zeb turns his head, painfully slowly, and looks around the room. “Where is Kanan?”</p><p>“He’s gone to get some rest,” Hera explains. “We’ve been sleeping in shifts since you and the baby were stabilised, so you weren’t on your own.”</p><p>“How long was I out?”</p><p>“A week,” she replies. “They had to put you into a coma. A lot of the doctors didn’t think you’d come out of it.”</p><p>He’s not <em>surprised</em> by that, but hearing it from a medical professional, even second-hand, is jarring nonetheless. “And the baby?”</p><p>“Most of her injuries were minor. Cuts and bruises, that sort of thing. She has a broken collarbone, but they think that was from the birth. That’s why she has the brace, there.” Hera strokes the infant’s cheek, fondly. “The worst part was the crying. ‘Neonatal distress,’ they called it. <em>I’ll </em>say she was distressed. She was pulling out her own <em>hair</em>. But she’s calmed down since they started her medicine and put her in your room. I think she knows that her dad saved her.”</p><p>Zeb snorts, the force of the air sending sparks of pain throughout his chest. He recognises the feeling of broken ribs. “I didn’t save anyone.”</p><p>Hera touches his shoulder, gingerly. “From the Empire? That wasn’t a fight you could have won.”</p><p>He can see in her eyes that she believes that. Believes in him, maybe. He turns his eyes away from her face, but she has full view of his shame. He was Captain of the Honour Guard. It was his job to protect Lasan, and if he couldn’t, to die trying. He has no right to live when so many had been murdered.</p><p>It would take hours to explain it all to her, and perhaps she’d never truly understand. So he takes the easy way out. He changes the subject. “That song you were singing when I woke up. What was it?”</p><p>Hera gives him a look, like she knows exactly what he’s doing, but she doesn’t try to make him talk. “It’s an old Twi’leki lullaby,” she explains. “I don’t think it translates well into Basic, but it goes something like this:</p><p>
  <em>Beloved sister, night is coming,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Fly in the stars, safe travels.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Rest your head, know your memory,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Dance in sweet dreams, safe travels.”</em>
</p><p>She cringes. “No. It sounds awful in Basic. The rhythm is all wrong. And I don’t think “know your memory” means the same thing at all. I suppose you could translate it to “know your ghost,” but that doesn’t work either.”</p><p>“Know your ghost?”</p><p>“Seku. It has a double meaning,” Hera explains. “A ghost is a memory of a soul, in Twi’leki lore.”</p><p>“You could say that of any ghost,” he replies.</p><p>“True.” Hera helps him take another sip of water, and then sets the glass down.</p><p>Zeb contemplates the baby, possibly the last child to ever be born on his homeworld. A little girl torn out of her place in the universe. She would have been raised a princess, in another life. She would have had a mother and father to raise her, cousins and siblings to play with, aunts and uncles to spoil her rotten. Lasan would have loved her, as they loved her mother. He might even have been her protector; he had been a captain, after all, and it was not uncommon for the royals to assign the most skilled members of the Honour Guard to watch over their youngest children.</p><p>But it’s all gone, now. Nothing but atoms in the air.</p><p>“It fits her, for a name,” he says, eventually.</p><p>“Hmm?”</p><p>“For the baby. Seku,” he explains. “A ghost and a memory.”</p><p>“She does look like a Seku.” Hera examines the child, musing. “So we know her name, but what about yours?”</p><p>No, he supposes he never had the opportunity to introduce himself. “It’s Zeb.”</p><p>“Seku and Zeb,” Hera repeats. She runs her fingers through the baby’s patchy hair. Seku looks so strange, lying on her back in a plastic cot. He doesn’t know much about babies, but he remembers his newborn siblings hanging onto their mother’s fur before they were even an hour old. Is it hurting her, to be without a body to cling to?</p><p>“I should be holding her,” he says. It’s sudden, but he’s certain of it. “Hera, she needs to be held.”</p><p>Hera puts a gentle hand on his shoulder, shaking her head. “You have a lot of very serious injuries. I don’t think you’d be able to. But…I have an idea,” she adds.</p><p>Ever so gently, she lifts Seku up and out of the cot. The baby squirms, but doesn’t cry. And Hera carries her closer, until her side is pressed against the bed, and sets Seku down on Zeb’s pillow.</p><p>The numbness, the emptiness in his core is flooded with sorrow, and shame, and crushing guilt, and he had no idea it was even possible to feel this much at once, but before he knows it, it floods out of him in quiet tears. He had failed her. He had failed all his people, but this was perhaps his greatest crime. She has nothing left, except for him. And how could he ever do all she needed of him?</p><p>“I’m sorry.” It’s not enough, will never be enough, but it’s all he can say. “I’m <em>sorry</em>.”</p><p>Seku takes a moment to process where she’s moved, and where he is, but then she smiles. He never knew babies so young <em>could</em> smile. She reaches out with her free hand. The four little fingers touch his cheek, and they feel like forgiveness. Acceptance. The fingers catch on his bottom lip – and, despite everything, Hera can’t suppress a chuckle – before they wrap around his beard once again.</p><p>“I think that’s her way of telling you not to be sorry.”</p><p>As if in agreement, Seku tugs on his beard ever so slightly. Zeb watches her yawn, and her blue eyes drift slowly closed.</p><p>He’ll take her with him, wherever they may be going. He’d known that before, but it’s only now he realises that he has a future to take her into. The gravity of that. He won’t take her because he feels obligated, or guilty, and if she ever thought herself a burden, it would be one more thing for which he could never forgive himself. No, he’ll take her because he loves her. He loves her so much it hurts, somewhere deep in his soul. His daughter, his little Seku. He would move the skies and the stars for her.</p><p>He closes his eyes, just feels her there. The soft sounds of her breathing, and the little snorts and coos she makes, are sweeter than any lullaby Hera could come up with. And it’s probably rude of him, but he finds himself following little Seku into sleep.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>It takes months of bacta treatments, and physiotherapy sessions, and several more surgeries, but Garazeb Orrelios finally walks out of the hospital on his own two feet. He still has his bo-rifle, strapped firmly to his back, and a bag of the pieces of his Honour Guard armour that had been salvageable. He carries the remnants of his old life, but now, he has a <em>new</em> life to build.</p><p>He sits in the crew lounge of the VCX-100 light freighter, warm and comfortable under the environmental controls. Seku rests happily against Zeb’s scarred chest, in a lilac wrap. Most of them had made her fuss, but the nurses had managed to find a few softer fabrics that she can stand. He remembered the first steps he’d taken from the hospital, how she’d looked around with wide, frightened eyes at the world outside the air-conditioned, pale-coloured setting of her life so far. Zeb only had eyes for one thing.</p><p>“Yup. There’s a whole world out here, kid,” he’d said, fondly. “A whole galaxy even.”</p><p>“Alright!” Hera calls from the cockpit, pulling Zeb back to the present. “We’re going to take off. Are you ready back there?”</p><p>“We’re good. Go for it, Hera.”</p><p>The Ghost’s engines whirr into life. A moment passes, and Zeb hears various switches and levers being flipped in the cockpit. The ship shudders, and Zeb’s stomach leaps for a moment like he’s falling, and then they’re flying. He’d forgotten how it felt, after all those months in a hospital ward.</p><p>Judging by her expression, Seku is not a huge fan of flying. At least not yet. Her good eye locks onto his face, and she makes a concerned little noise.</p><p>“Don’t look so worried,” he replies. “We’re gonna get by, you and me. Can’t say I know exactly <em>how</em>, yet, but your Auntie Hera and Uncle Kanan have given us a room, so that’s a good start. Their ship is called the Ghost. I didn’t know that before. I promise you’re not named after a starship.”</p><p>Seku gurgles curiously.</p><p>“I know. A ghost aboard a Ghost. It’s funny, right?”</p><p>Even though he knows that she doesn’t understand what he’s saying, his tone must be reassuring, because she seems a little happier about the situation. He runs a finger over her cheek, and lets her catch it when she reaches for it. He hopes that’s encouraging for her. She squeezes the finger tight, and squeals happily.</p><p>“I love you too. Even more than you know.”</p><p>It still hurts, to think of Lasan. It will always hurt. Like a phantom limb, permanently bent. But he looks at her, and her tiny white fingers clutched around his own, and the weight in his chest lifts, just a little. It’s his mission to protect Lasan. And if this little girl is all that’s left of it, well, then Garazeb Orrelios knows exactly what he has to do.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Note: Seku isn't intended to be Zeb's biological daughter, but if you'd like to believe that Zeb had an affair with a beautiful Lasat princess, then I would not dream of stopping you.</p><p>Huge thanks to DarkDranzer for all her help and input, even with all the stuff going on in her life. She's an awesome writer, so if you like Zeb, go give her some love.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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